BY JANE ROY BROWN

“Are you folks from the parks department?” asked a white-haired man in hiking clothes.

It was an early summer morning, and he approached a small group standing in a path at 1st Lt. Arthur E. Farnham Jr. and SSgt. Thomas M. Connolly Jr. Memorial Park, which covers 12 acres on the 338-acre site of a former regional airport in Canton, southwest of Boston. The group did not include anyone from the park’s managing agency, the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR). But it did include the park’s designers, Deneen Crosby, ASLA, and Daniel Norman, ASLA, from the Boston firm Crosby | Schlessinger | Smallridge (CSS). With them was the consulting biologist Ingeborg Hegemann, the senior vice president of ecological sciences and principal at BSC Group, a Boston-based environmental services firm. Hegemann worked with CSS to evaluate the soils, review proposed grading, and select plants and seed stock for the park, which includes extensive restored wetlands.

The park visitor, a retired Canton resident who identified himself as “Mike,” described a woman he had spotted digging up plants and stashing them in her trunk. “She had a shovel in the car, so it wasn’t the first time,” he said, pulling a notebook from his day pack. He read out a plate number. Norman jotted it down. “I come here almost every day,” said Mike. “I love this park, and I don’t want to see it destroyed.”

It was the kind of gratifying feedback professionals who work on public projects rarely get firsthand, and it left the team (more…)